Statement as to rights to inventions made under Federally-sponsored research and development: Not applicable
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is an apparatus that throws targets such as are used by skeet and trap shooters. The apparatus holds as supply of targets which are automatically fed to a throwing arm, eliminating the need for a person to manually load each target as it is required by the target thrower.
2. Description of Prior Art
Existing prior art includes:
Currently, both manually loaded and automatically loaded target throwers are used.
However, due to differences in flight patterns of double thrown targets from the automatically loaded target throwers, competition shooters prefer the manually loaded target throwers.
Manually loaded target throwers typically one person loads each clay target, as required, and a second person actuates an electrical switch to fire the target thrower. The problem with this is that the person actuating the target thrower firing mechanism didn""t know for sure if there was a target properly loaded in target thrower. This could disappoint the shooter who was waiting for a target to be thrown. In competitions, this is unacceptable. Even more unacceptable, is if the target loader had his hands injured because his hands were in the way of the firing mechansim when the target thrower was actuated by the person actuating the electrical switch. While a properly trained loader should not have a hand or finger caught in the firing mechanism, it happens. While automatic target throwers, which eliminate the need for manual loading exist, they are complicated as compared to the present invention.
Targets thrown in pairs by the manually loaded machines are thrown in a tighter flight pattern than are those targets thrown in pairs by the automatically loaded machines. The difference is significant enough, that in trap shoot meets, the contestants try to get signed up for the manually loaded machines, if there is a choice between of machines. Some have been known to decline to compete if they had to shoot at targets thrown from the automatically loaded target throwing machines. For a shooter new to the sport, it is not a major consideration, usually. However, the very experienced target shooters who grew up with the manually loaded target throwing machines, it usually is a major problem for them in competition shooting. Also, existing automatically loaded target throwing machines index only in one direction, typically counterclockwise as you are looking at the top of the machine.
Targets are loaded into a magazine in such existing automatically loaded target throwing machines. There is no simple way to counter rotate said magazine should there be a problem, such as a broken target, where it would be desirable to get a certain section of the magazine in position so someone could remedy the problem.
Accurate placement of targets on launching arms seems to be a basic problem of existing automatically loaded target throwing machines. Targets launched from machines with automatic loading devices that drop a target from a magazine of targets, directly onto a launching arm, seem to have the variations in flight patterns that are objectionable to shooters.
Nisson, U.S. Pat. No. 5,937,839, for example, lacks a controlled way in which a target is handled from a magazine of targets to the launch arm. This would seem to cause variations in flight patterns that would be objectional to shooters.
As will be seen in the subsequent description of the preferred embodiments of the present invention, the present invention overcomes these and other deficiencies of existing technology.
The present invention is an apparatus, that enables one person to both load and operate the target thrower as opposed to having an operator plus a loader. A rotary indexing carousel assembly, releases one or two targets as desired by an operator, through one or two target dispensing apertures that permits a target to fall through each of said aperetures by its own weight onto a target lowering assembly that is pulled downward. As the target lowering assembly is pulled downward, one or two, as desired, targets are deposited on temporary support fingers and stabilizing fingers. The target lowering assembly continues to move downward, out of the way.
As these actions are occurring, a target throwing arm is being rotated into position to launch a target. The arm continues to rotate until it is stopped and held in postion by a stop. The arm moves under the one or two targets, pushes down the support fingers. The arm supports the one or two targets which are then ready to be thrown.
A brake assembly serves to provide a braking action on the arm as the arm is rotating into position to load a new target. Targets are launched by a release rotating the stop out of the way. The target throwing arm then rotates rapidly, launching the one or two targets.
The present invention .has the flight patterns of targets thrown from existing target throwers. This is important to many competition trap shooters when target pairs are thrown. Target pairs thrown by existing manually loaded target throwers have a different flight pattern that the flight pattern of target pairs thrown by existing automatically loaded target throwers. The rotary indexing carousel assembly can be conveniently rotated in either direction as opposed to having to be indexed under power in only one direction as is the case with present technology.